loads for .45 cal
Hi guys - just wondering what kind of loads you .45 cal shooters use. I'd love to know what you use & what kind of accuracy you're getting.
I posted last fall about having some accuracy problems with a new .45 I bought. This spring I picked up some 777 ffG on sale and have been trying to work up a load (before I was using only 777 pellets). I've been using Barnes XTP's - the 10mm 200 grain bullet, mostly because they are cheap to buy in bulk and I've been impressed with their terminal performance on deer. I'm using Harvestor sabots that I get in bulk as well.
A few weeks ago I spent an afternoon trying different amounts of powder charges. Shooting 3-shot groups with 90 grains of 777, the holes in the paper were almost touching at 50 yards. When I backed off to 100 yards though, the groups opened up quite a bit - you could still cover the shots with a pie plate, but not very impressive in my book for 100 yards. I shot a couple nice groups (about 3")at 100 yards with 100 grains of 777, butthey weren't consistent (some groups were all over the place with 100 grains). Just wondering what you guys think about this. Do you think that backing off to 80 or even 70 grains of powder would help? Would this load still be powerful enough at 150 yards? Ihunt mostly on strip-mined grassland where theshots can be long, and I want to find a load/combo that is accurate and powerful enough to shoot out to 150 - 175 yards.
Any thoughts/comments are appreciated. By the way, I'm shooting a .45 cal. bolt-action Cascade Magnum (CVA) with a Bushnell 3 X9scope.